Wal-Mart begins talent hunt for India

Not withstanding the noises being created by the Left, enty of the world’s biggest retailer Wal-Mart in India in 2007 is a certainity. By appointing Raj Jain as its president and CEO designate for operations in the country, Wal-Mart, made its intentions known even before inking the tie-up agreement with the telecom major Bharati Enterprises. The company has set up a project office in Delhi and is working on various roll out strategies, including the plans for ‘cash and carry’ wholesale for which it has already sought the permission from the government.

According to media reports, Jain, who was a Regional Director for marketing and product delivery with Whirlpool Asia, had worked for Hindustan Lever for 16 years. Jain, who is believed to be a specialist in logistics, will be reporting to Mike Duke, vice chairman, Wal-Mart International. He will be responsible for recruiting and building the Wal-Mart team in India.

Taking into account policy constraints, while the front-end retail operations of the alliance in the country will be exclusively owned by Bharati, the ‘cash carry’ business to be modelled on the lines of Sam’s Clubs in the US and elsewhere will be shared between Bharati and Wal-Mart.

After selling its highly competitive business, comprising 16 stores in Korea, for $882 million to Shinsegae Co., in May, 2006, Wal-Mart is left with negligible presence in Asia. It has 391 stores operating in Japan and 66 stores operating in China. Wal-Mart besides India is also focussing on China, where it wants to expand many fold before the onset of 2008 olympics.

How they made their billions?

Frank Feather- one of the world’s top 100 futurists, in his recent book “Future Living” has given details on the number of years taken by some of the world’s legendary billionaires to make their first billion dollars:

• Henry Ford 23 years (Ford Motors)
• Sam Walton 20 years (Wal-Mart)
• Bill Gates 12 years (Microsoft)
• Jeff Bezos 3 years (Amazon)

It’s interesting to note that to build their fortunes all of these fabled wealth creators have:

• built a system,
• miniaturised their offerings, and,
• retailed products and/or services to the customers.

The acronym SYSTEM, according to Robert Allen stands for, Save Your Self Time, Energy & Money. Just look at the systems they built to make their billions: Ford created assembly line system, Walton depended on superior logistics system, Gates wrote computer operating system, and Bezos created e-commerce system.

It’s also interesting to observe that the the products and services they offered progressively became miniaturised — smaller and smaller — from cars to consumer products to software on CDs to pure bits and electrons (Amazon doesn’t sell anything, it’s just an interface on the web for conducting e-commerce).

What do Indian retailers dread?

Bachi Karkaria, the well known columnist, of the Times Group, who writes a popular weekly column “Erratica” in the Sunday Times, summed up fears of the Indian retailers, who for obvious reasons dread the entry of Wal-Mart in India, very well in just one word, thus:

Alec Smart said:

“What do Indian retailers dread?

Walmartyrdom.”

(Sunday Times: 3rd December, 2006)